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OUTLINES
OF INDIAN I

PHILOSOPHY !
THE PHILOSOPHY
OF THE VEDANTA

DEUSSEN

OF THK

University of California.

Class

^rt

OUTLINES

OF

INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

OUTLINES

OF

INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

WITH AH APPENDIX

ON THE PHILOSOPHY
OF THE VEDXNTA

IN ITS

RELATIONS TO OCCIDENTAL METAPHYSICS

BY

DR. PAUL DEUSSEN

PB0FB8S0B AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KIEL

BERLIN

KARL CURTIUS

1907

■i>(

wrtf/Mi

PRINTED BY OSCAR BRAKD8TSITBR, LEIPIia

PREFATORY NOTES

BY THE AUTHOR

The first of the two treatises, composing this little
volume, appeared in the Indian Antiquary 1902 and
is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editor
Sir Richard Temple. The appendix "On the Philosophy
of the Vedanta'* was originally an address delivered
before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,
the 26**^ February 1893.

Both treatises complete in some way each other,
the first being a very short summary of the history
of the Indian philosophy, the second giving a concise
idea of that religious and philosophical system, which
more than any other is ruling in India even in our days.

A fuller account of the subjects treated in this little
volume may be found in the following worfcs^ of the
same author:

Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic mit beson-
derer Berticksichtigung der Religionen, vol I:
Allgemeine Einleitimg und Philosophic des

181772

VI PREFATORY NOTES.

Veda bis auf die Upanishads, vol. U: Die
Philosophie der Upanishads (translated into
£kiglish by Rev. A. S. Geden under the title: The
Philosophy of the Upanishads, Edinburgh 1906);
vol. Ill: (in preparation) Die nachvedisehe Philo-
sophie der Inder. The second edition of the
volumes published till now appeared Leipzig,
1906 and 1907.

Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, aus dem Sans-
krit tlbersetzt und mit Einleitungen und An-
merkungen versehen, 11^ edition Leipzig, 1905. —

VierphilosophischeTextedesMah&bh&ratam,
aus dem Sanskrit tlbersetzt, Leipzig 1906.

Die StLtra's des VedAnta nebst dem vollst&ndigen
Eommentare des Qankara, aus dem Sanskrit tlber-
setzt, Leipzig 1887.

Das System des Ved&nta, nach den Brahma-
Stltra's des BAdarAyana und dem Eonmientare des
Qankara tlber dieselben als ein Compendium der
Dogmatik des Brahmanismus vom Standpunkte
des Qankara aus dargestellt. 11^ edition Leip-
zig 1906. —

CONTENTS

L OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY.

PAGE

PBEPATOBY BEMABKS S

HBST pebiod: philosophy of the BIGVEDA. . . 7

SECOND pebiod: philosophy of the UPANISHADS . 2t

THIBD pebiod: POSTVEDIC philosophy 34

II. ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE

VEDInTA in ITS RELATIONS TO

OCCIDENTAL METAPHYSICS.

INTBODUCTION 46

1. THEOLOGY 49

2. COSMOLOGY 62

8. PSYCHOLOGY &S

4. BSCHATOLOGY 61

OUTLINES
OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

DEUSSEN: PHILOSOPnY

PREFATORY REMARKS

AMONG the pretexts by which Elaropean idleiieBs
tries to escape the study of Indian philosophy we
hear most frequently the remark that the ^^
philosophy of the Indians is quite different of indiui

PhUosophj

from our own and has nothing whateyer
to do with the development of Occidental religion and
philosophy. The fact is perfectly true; but far from
being a reason for neglecting the study of Indian wis-
dom, it furnishes us with the strongest argument in
favour of devoting ourselves to it all the more. The
philosophy of the Indians must become for every one
who takes any interest in the investigation of philo-
sophical truth, an object of the highest interest; for
Indian philosophy is and will be the only possible
parallel to what so far the Europeans have considered
as philosophy. In fact, modem European philosophy has
sprung from the scholasticism of the Middle Ages; me-
dieval thought again is a product of Greek philo-
sophy on the one hand and of the Biblical dogma on the
other. The doctrine of the Bible has again its roots in
part in the oldest Semitic creed and in part in the

4 OUTLINES OP INDIAN FHIL030PHT

Pendan rdigion of ZoroAslery wMeii, as an intenncdiate
link between the Old and ibe New Testament, hns
exerdaed more infhienee than is eommonly attrfbnted
to it. In this way the whole of European thought
from Pythag<»as and Xenophanes, from Moses and
Zoroaster, throngh Platonism and Christianity down
to the Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy, f onns a
eomplez of ideas, whose elements are yarionsly related
to and dependent on each other. On the othtf hand
Indian phflosophy throngh all the centuries of its de^e-
lopment has taken its course vninflneneed by West-
Asiatic and European thought; and precisdy for this
reason the comparison of European philosophy with that
of the Indians is of the highest interest.^ Where both
agree the presDmption is that their eonehisions are
correct, no less than in a case where two calculators
working by different methods arrive at the same result ;
and wheafe Indian and European views differ it is an
op^i question on which side the truth is probably to
be found.

2. Indian philosophy falls naturally into three pe-
riods; these three periods are equally strongly marked
Periods ^ ^^^ general history of Indian civilisation

ofindiaa and are dependent on the geography of

PUlotoplij

India. India, as Sir William Jones has al-
ready remarked, has the form of a square whose four
angles are turned to the four cardinal points, and

PREFATORY REMARKS 6

are marked by the Hindu Kush in the north, Cape
Comorin in the south,, and the mouths of the Ganges
and Indus in the east and west. If a line be drawn
from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Ganges (nearly
coinciding with the tropic of Cancer), the square is
divided into two triangles — Hindustan in the north,
and the Deccan in the south. If again in the northern
triangle we let fall a perpendicular from the vertex
upon the base, this divides northern India into the
valley of the Indus and the plaiu of the Ganges, se-
parated by the desert of Marusthala. Thus India falls
into three parts — (1) the Panjab, (2) the plain of the
Ganges, (3) the Deccan plateau. To these three geo-
graphical divisions correspond the three periods of Indian
life: — (1) The domain of the Aryan Hindus in the
oldest period was limited to the valley of the Indus
with its five tributaries ; the only literary monuments
of this epoch are the 1017 hynms of the lEtigveda.
Though chiefly serving religious purposes they give
by the way a lively and picturesque delineation of
that primitive manner of life in which there were no
castes, no dgramas (stages of life), and no Brahmanical
order of life in general. The hynms of the Rigveda
display not only the ancient Indian polytheism in its
full extent, but contain also in certain of the later
hymns the first germs of a philosophical view of the
world. (2) It may have been about 1000 B. C. that

6 OUTLINES OP INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

the Aryans starting from the Panjab began to extend
their conquests to the east and occupied little by little the
plain extending from the Himalayas in the north and the
Vindhyas in the south to the mouth of the Ganges. The
conquest of this territory may have been accomplished,
roughly speaking, between 1000 and 500 B. C. As
literary monuments of this second period of Indian life
we find the Sanihit&s of the Yajwr-, Sdmor^ and^tftart;at;eda,
together with the Br&hmanas and their culmination in
the Upanishads. Hand in hand with this literary develop-
ment we have under the spiritual dominion of the
Brahmans the establishment of that original organisation
which as the Brahmanical order of life has survived
in India with some modification until the present day.
(3) After these two periods, which we may distinguish
as **old-Vedic" and "new-Vedic", follows a third period
of Indian history — the "post-Vedic** — beginning about
600 B. C. with the rise of the heretical tendencies of
Buddhism and Jainism, and producing in the succeeding
centuries a large number of literary works in which,
together with poetry, grammar, law, medicine and astro-
nomy, a rich collection of philosophical works in Sanskrit
permits us to trace the development of the philosophical
mind down to the present time. In this period Indian,
}. e., Brahnianicid, civilisation makes its way round
the coast of Southern India and Ceylon and penetrates
conquering into the remotest districts of Central India.

FIRST PERIOD -
PHILOSOPHY OF THE RIGVEDA

3. The oldest interpretation of Natnre and therefore
the first philosophy of a people is its religion, and
for the origin and essence of religion there
is no book in the world more instructive ^"^J^l^,
than the Bigveda; Homer in Greece, and
the most ancient parts of the Old Testament show
religion in an advanced state of development which
presupposes many preliminary stages now lost to us.
In India alone we can trace back religion to its first
origin. It is true that the hymns of the l^gveda also
show religion in a later stage of development; some
primitive gods stand already in the background, as
Dyaus (heaven) and Prithivi (earth); they are rarely
mentioned but with an awe which shows their high
position at an earlier period. Another god, Varuna (the
starry heaven), is still prominent, but even he is in dan-
ger of being superseded by Indra, the god of the thunder-
storm and of war; and a remarkable h3rmn (iv. 42)

8 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

exhibits a dialogue between Vamna and Indra, in which
each boasts his greatness, while the poet notwithstanding
the full respect for Varuna, betrays a certain partiality
for Indra. This case and many others show that the
Rigvedic religion also is in an advanced state of develop-
ment ; but the names of the gods considered etymolo-
gically and the character of the myths related of them,
are so transparent that we are able in nearly every
case to discover the original meaning of the god in
question. Thus there can be no doubt that Varuna
('OvQavdg) is a personification of the heaven with its
regular daily revolution, and that he only in later
times became a god of the waters. Other gods represent
the sun in its various aspects : Siirya the radiant globe
of the sun, Savitflx the arouser, Vishciu the vivifying
force, Mitra the benevolent light, th^ friend of mankind,
and P^han, the shepherd of the world. Besides these
we have the two Agvins, a divine pair who bring help
in time of need, and seem to mean originally the twilight
with which the day begins and the terrors of the night
have an end. A very transparent personification of the
dawn is Ushas {*H(&g, Aurora) represented as a beautiful
maiden displaying every morning her charms before
the eyes of the world. If from these gods of the luminous
heaven we pass to the secon.d part of the universe, the
atmosphere, we meet here among others Vftyu or V&ta,
god of the winds, Parjanya, the rain-god, the terrible

PHILOSOPHY OF THE WGVEDA 9

Badra, who probably personifies the destructive and
purifying lightning, further theMaruts, the merry gods of
the storm and above all Indra, the god of the thunder-
storm, who in his battles against the demons that hinder
the rain from falling, is the typical god of warfare
and thus the ideal of the Hindu of the heroic epoch.
Lastly, coming to the earth, there are many phenomena
of Nature and life considered as divine powers, but
above. aU Agni, god of the destructive and helpful fire,
and Soma, a personification of the intoxicating power
of the- soma-drink, which inspires gods and men to
heroic deeds. This short sketch shows clearly what
the gods were in ancient India and what mutatis mutandis
they are originally in every religion of the worid, namely,
personifications of natural forces and natural
phenomena. Man in passing from the brute state to
human consciousness found himself surrounded by and
dependent on various natural powers: the nourishing
earth, the fertilising heaven, the wind, the rain, the thun-
derstorm, etc. , and ascribed to them not only will, like that
of man, which was perfectly correct, but also human per-
sonality, human desires and human weaknesses, which cer-
tainly was wrong. These personified natural powers were
fuither considered as the origin, the maintainors and
controllers of what man found in himself as the moral
law, opposed to the egoistic tendencies natural to man.
Thus the religion of the l^gveda may teach us that

10 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

gods, wherever we meet them in the world, are com-
pounded of two elements — a mythological, so far as they
are personifications of natnral powers and phenomena,
and a moral element so far as these personifications
are considered as the authors and guardians of the
moral law. Let us add that the better religion is that
in which the moral element preponderates, and the
less perfect religion that in which the mythological
element is developed at the cost of the moral. If we
apply this criterion to the religion of the Rigveda, we
must recognize that, notwithstanding its high interest
in so many respects, it cannot as a religion claim a
specially high position ; for the Bigvedic gods, though
at the same time the guardians of morality (gopd fitasya),
are mainly regarded as beings of superhuman powers
but egotistic tendencies. This moral deficiency of the
Bigvedic religion has certainly been the chief cause
of the surprisingly rapid decay of the old-Vedic worship ;
jthis decay and at the same time the first germs of
philosophical thought we can trace in certain of the
later hymns of the l^igveda, as we shall now proceed
to demonstrate.

4. In certain later hymns of the Bigveda there are
Decay of th« numistakeablc signs that the ancient creed

Old-Vedio ®

Beiigicin was falling into disrepute. A beautiful

hymn (x. 117) recommends the duty of benevolence
without any reference to the gods, apparently be-

PHILOSOPHY OP THE 9IGVEDA 11

cause they were too weak a support tor pure moral
actions. Another hymn (x. 151) is addressed not
to a god but to Faith, and praising the merit
of faith, concludes with the prayer: ''O Faith, make
us faithful.^ In a time of unshaken faith such a
prayer would hardly have been offered. But we
have clearer proofs that the old-Vedic faith began
to fade. In a hymn (ii. 12) to Indra, the principal
god of the Vedic Hindu, the poet says: — "the
terrible god, whose existence they doubt, and ask
•where is he*, nay, whom they deny, saying, *he
is not', this god will destroy his enemies like play-
things" — and doubts like this occur now and
then; but even more frequently we meet passages
and entire hymns which evidently ridicule the gods
and their worship, more especially that of the god
Indra. Everybody in the world, says the hymn ix. 112,
pursues his egoistic interests, the joiner hopes for
broken wheels, the doctor for broken limbs, the
blacksmith looks for customers; I am a poet, says
the author, my father is a physician, my mother turns
the mill in the kitchen, and so we all pursue our
own advantage, as a herdsman his cows. This little
piece of humorous poetry would be perfectly inno-
cent were it not that after each verse comes the re-
frain, probably taken from an old hymn: "Thou,
Soma, flow for Indra", which evidently means that

12 OUTLINES OP INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

Indra also seeks his own advantage and is an egotist
like other people.

Even more bold is the scorn in hymn x. 119, which
introduces Indra in the merriest humour, ready to
give away everything, ready to destroy the earth and
all that it contains, boasting of his greatness in ridi-
culous fashion, — all this because, as the refrain tells
us, he is in an advanced stage of intoxication, caused
by excessive appreciation of the soma offered to him.
Another hymn (vii. 103) sings of the frogs, comparing
their voices to the noise of a Brahmanical school and
their hopping round the tank to the behaviour of
drunken priests celebrating a nocturnal offering of
Soma. As here the holy teachers and the priests,
so in another hymn (x. 82) the religious poetry
of the Veda and its authors are depreciated by
the words: "The Vedic minstrels, wrapped in fog
and floods of words, go on the stump to make a
livelihood."

6. The age in which such words were possible was
certainly ripe for philosophy; and accordingly we see
Be innin 8 of ^^^^giug in Certain later hymns of the
Philosophical ]Rigveda the thought by which here as well as
^^ in Greece philosophy begins — the concep-

tion of the unity of the world. Just as Xenophanes
in Greece puts above all the popular gods his one
deity who is nothing more than the universe consi-

PHILOSOPHY OF THE RIGVEDA 13

dered as a unity, we find in the Bigveda a remar-
kable seeking and enquiring after that one from which,
as an eternal, unfathomable, unspeakable unity, all
gods, worlds, and creatures originate. The Hindus
arrive at this Monism by a method essentially different
from that of other countries. Monotheism was attained
in Egypt by a mechanical identification of the various
local gods, in Palestine by proscription of other gods
and violent persecution of their worshippers for the
benefit of the national god, Jehovah. In India they
reached Monism though not Monotheism on a more
philosophical path, seeing through the veil of the
manifold the unity which underlies it. Thus the pro-
found and difficult hymn, i, 164, pointing out the
difference of the names Agni, Indra and V&yu,
comes to the bold conclusion: "there is one being of
which the poets of the hymns speak under various
names.*' The same idea of the unity of the universe
is expressed in the wonderful hymn x. 129, which as
the most remarkable monument of the oldest philosophy
we here translate? —

1. In the beginning t^ere was neither Non-Being
nor Being, neither atmosphere nor sky beyond.
— What enveloped all things? Where were they,
in whose care? What was the ocean, the unfa-
thomable depth?

14 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHT

2. At that time there was neither mortal nor
immortal, neither night nor day. — That being
the only one, breathed withont air in indepen-
dence. Beyond it nonght existed.

3. Darkness was there; by darkness enshrouded in
the beginning, an ocean without lights wad all
this world; — but the pregnant germ which
was enveloped by the husk was bom by the
strength of penitence. ( j^r/ ^»"' ) foi^-

4. And forth went as the first-bom K&ma (love) - ^j-
which was the primordial seed of mind. — Thus
wise men meditating have found out the link of
Non-Being and Being in the heart.

6. They threw their plumbline across the universe.
What was then below and what above? There
were seedbearers; there was mighty striving; in-
dependence beneath, exertion above.

6. But who knows and who can tell from where was
bom, from where came forth creation? — The
gods came afterwards into existence. Who then
can say from whence creation came?

7. He from whom this creation proceeded, whether
he created it or not. He whose eye watches it
in the highest heaven. He perhaps knows it —
or perhaps he knows it not.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE ^IGVEDA 15

I add a metrical translation^:

1. Non-Being was not; Being was not yet;

There was no vault of heaven, no realm of air/
Where was the ocean, where the deep abyss?
What mantled all? Where was it, in whose care?

2. Death was not known nor yet immortal life;

Night was not bom and day was not yet seen.
Airless he breathed in primevality

The One beyond whom nought hath ever been.

3. Darkness prevailed at first, a chaos dread;

'Twas this great world, clad in its cloak of nijght.
And then was brought to being the germ of all,
The One pent in this husk, by Ta'pas' might.

4. And first of all from him proceeded love,

JE^ma, the primal seed and germ of thought.
In Non-existence was by sages found

Existence' root, when in the heart they sought.

5. When through the realm of Being their arc they

spanned.
What was beneath it, what was in their ken?
Germ-carriers beneath! Strivings above!

The Qeeds of things were hid, the things were seen.

^ I am indebted for this translation to
Mr. N. W. Thomas, M. A.

16 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

6. Whence sprang the universe? Who gave it form?

What eye hath seen its birth? Its source who

knows?
Before the world was made the gods were not;
Who then shall tell us whence these things arose?

7. He who hath moulded and called forth the worlds

Whether he hath created it or not,
Who gazeth down on it from heaven's heights,
He knoweth it; or doth he know it not?

6. The great thought of the unity of all things
having been conceived, the next task was to find
Attain ts to ^^* What this uuity was. For the attempt
detannine to determine it the hymn x. 121 , is especially

that Unity

typical which, starting apparently from the
hymn x. 129, or a similar piece of work, seeks a name
for that unknown god who was the last unity of the
universe. In the first eight verses the poet points out
the wonders of creation and concludes each verse by
asking '^Who is that god, that we may worship him?''
In the ninth verse he finds a name for that new and
unknown deity, calling it Prajapati (lord of the crea-
tures). Thii^ name in striking contrast to the names
of the old Vedic gods, is evidently not of popular
origin but the creation of a philosophical thinker.
Henceforth Praj&pati occupies the highest position in
the pantheon, until he is displaced by two other, more

PHILOSOPHY OF THE 9IGVEDA 17

philosophical eonceptions — Brahman and Atman.
These three names, Prajd^pati, Brahman and Atman
dominate the whole philosophical development from the
^igveda to the Upanishads. The oldest term Praj&pati
is merely mythological and the transition from it to
the term Atman (which, as we shall see, is highly
philosophical) is very natural. Bnt it is very characte-
ristic of the Hindu mind that this transition is accom-
plished by means of an intermediate term Brahman,
which was originally merely ritual in its meaning and
application, signifying ' 'prayer' '. At the time of the Upa-
nishads the name Praj&pati is nearly forgotten and
appears only now and then as a mythological figure,
while the terms Brahman and Atman have become iden-
tical and serve in turn to express that being which, as we
shall see, is the only object of which the Upanishads
treat. We have now to trace the history of these three
terms in detail.

7. It is characteristic of the way in which Indian
religion developed that a mere philosophical abstraction
such as Prajftpati might put in the back-
ground all the other gods and occupy in Praja^u*'
the time of theBrd,hmanas the highest place
in the Hindu pantheon. PrajUpati in this period is con-
sidered as the father of gods, men and demons, as
the creator and ruler of the world. Numerous passages
of the BrdhmanaSf intended to recommend some ritual

DEUSSEN: PHILOSOPHY 8

i

18 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

usage, describe the rite or formula as produced by
Prajapati and employed by him in the creation of
the world. Such passages regularly begin with the
phrase that in the beginning PrajS.pati alone was, that
he performed penance and thereby worthily prepa-
red himself for creating the different gods, the worlds
and the various implements and materials of sacrifice.
All the gods depend on him; in him they take refuge
when harassed by the demons; and to him as arbi-
trator they come if some quarrel about their relative
dignity arises. Into these details we will not enter;
we will here only point out that the Indian idea of
creation is essentially different from that current in
the Christian world. PrajApati does not create a world;
he transforms himself, his body and his limbs into the
different parts of the universe. Therefore in creating
he is swallowed up, he falls to pieces, and is restored
by the performance of some rite which is in this way
recommended. In later texts we observe a tendency
to get rid of Praj&pati whether by deriving him from
a stiU higher principle, such as the primordial waters,
the Non-ent preceding his existence, or by explaining
him away and identifying him with the creating mind,
the creating word, the sacrifice or the year as principles of
the world. In older passages PrajApati creates, among
other ritual objects, the Brahman; later passages on
the other hand make him dependent on the Brahman.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE RIGVEDA 19

8. Every attempt to explain this central idea of
Indian philosophy must proceed from the fact that
the word Brahman throughout the Rigveda
in which it occurs more than 200 times, t^e'sSoiman
signifies without exception nothing more
than "prayer". Like Soma and other gifts, the prayer
of the poet is off ered to the gods ; they enjoy it; they
are fortified by it for their heroic deeds; and as man
stands in need of the various benefits of the gods,
the gods need for their welfare the offerings and
especially the prayers of mankind; "prayer is a *tonic'
of the gods*'; "Indra for his battles is fortified by
prayer" (offered to him); phrases like these occur
frequently in the Rigveda; thus the idea became more
and more prominent that human prayer is a power
which surpasses in potency even the might of the
gods. In the moments of religious devotion man felt
himself raised above his own individuality, felt awak-
ening in himself that metaphysical power on which -
all worlds with their gods and creatures are depen- ^
dent. By this curious development (comparable to the '
history of the Biblical Adyog) Brahman, the old name
for prayer, became the most usual name for the crea-
tive principle of the world. An old Iligvedic question
"which was the tree, which was the wood, of which
they hewed the earth and heaven"? is repeated in a
Brdhinaf:^a text, and followed by the answer: "The

20 OUTLINES OP INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

Brahman was the tree, the wood from which they
hewed the earth and heaven." Here the term Brahman
has become ahready what it has been through all the
following centuries — the most common name for
the eternal and changeless principle of the world.

9. A better name even than Brahman, and per-
haps the best name which philosophy has foond
HiBtor7of ^ <^y language to designate the prin-
tii6 Atman ^^pj^ ^f ^^ world, is the word Atman,
which properly is the exact equivalent of the
english "Self". Thus Atman means that which remains
if we take away from our person all that is Non-self,
foreign, all that comes and passes away; it means "the
changeless, inseparable essence of our own Self", and on
the other hand the essence of the Self of the whole world.
It is not possible, as in the case of Prajd.pati and
Brahman, to frame a history of the word Atman.
It has no regular development but we see it emerge
here and there in proportion as the thinker seeks
and finds a more clear-cut expression for the word
Brahman to name that being which can never by
any means be taken away from us, and therefore
forms the only true essence of our nature, our dimany
our Self. With this word we have reached the sphere
of the Upanishads; we must now say a few words
on these most remarkable monuments of ancient Indian
literature.

SECOND PERIOD
PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS

10. If we compare the Veda and the Bible we may
say that the Old Testament is represented in the Veda
by all the hymns ajid Brdhma'^ texts, which ^ '

•^ '' . ' The U|>t-

serve the purpose of ritual worship. But, nishiidsof
as the Old Testament is superseded by the
New, so in the Veda all ritual performances with their
rewards are declared insufficient and replaced by a
higher view of things in those wonderful texts which,
forming as a rule the concluding chapters of each
Veda, are called Yedftnta (end of the Veda) orUpani-
shads (confidential sitting, secret doctrine). The four
Vedas produced different branches or schools, each of
which has handed down the common content of the
Vedas in a slightly different form. Thus every Vedic.
school had, besides the Samhitd, or collection of verses
and formulas, a special Brfthmanam as its ritual text^
book, and a longer or shorter Upanishad, which forms

22 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

its dogmatic text-book. Therefore all the Upanishads
treat of the same subject, the doctrine of Brahman
or At man, and vary only in length and manner of
treatment. There are about a dozen Upanishads of the
three older Yedas and a great number of later treatises
of the same name which are incorporated in the Athar-
vaveda. Distinguished by its age, length, and intrin-
sic importance is, before all, the BrihadS,ranyaka-
Upanishad, and next to it Ch&ndogya-Upani-
shad. More remarkable for their beauty than for
their originality are E&thaka-Upanishad, Mun-
daka-Upanishad, and others.

11. Two terms, Brahman and Atman, form almost

the only objects of which the Upanishads speak. Very

often they are treated as synonyms, but

idea of the whcu a difference is noticeable, Brahman

Up&DishadB "'

is the philosophical principle, as realised in
the universe, and Atman the same^ as realised in the soul.
This presupposed, we might express the fundamental
thought of all the Upanishads by the simple equation : —

Brahman = Atman
that is. Brahman, the power from which all worlds
proceed, in which they subsist, and into which they
finally return, this eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent
power is identical with our ft tm an, with that in each
of us which we must consider as our true Self, the
unchangeable essence of our being, our soul. This idea

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI8HADS 23

, alone secures to the Upanishads an importance reaching
/ far beyond their land and time; for whatever means
> of unveiling the secrets of Nature a future time may
j discover, this idea will be true for ever, from this man-
\ kind will never depart, — if the mystery of Nature is to
\be solved, the key of it can be found only there where
'' alone Nature allows us an interior view of the world,
that is in ourselves.

12. It can be proved that the Upanishads of the
three first Vedas are older generally speaking than
the Atharva Upanishads ; of the former those chronoio
in poetic form belong undoubtedly to a of the

UpftnishadB

later period than those written m the old
and simple prose style of the Brdhmavms; among these
again the two oldest are Brihadd^ranyaka and
Chandogya, which contain the oldest Upanishad
texts we possess. There are passages in Chdndogya
which may claim the priority over the parallel texts
in Bfihaddraityaka, but in most cases it can be clearly
proved that passages in Chdndogya are not only younger
than the parallel texts in Bfihaddrafjiyaka but even depen-
dent on them; this is evident from the fact that several
passages of Bfihaddrai^yaka^ recur more or less literally
in Chdndogya but are no longer understood in their
original meaning. In this way a careful comparison
of the texts leads us to this result that in the whole
Upanishad literature there are scarcely any texts older

24 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PEOLOSOFHr

ttan ihcme contaiwed in BfikrUp. 1-4 which are coimeeted
with the person of Y&jftaTalkya ; these either speak
of him as is the ease in 1, 4 and 2, 4, or reproduce
his discourses with adTcrsaries and his friend, the king
Janaka, and take up the whole of tiie third and
fourth book. In these passages we have the oldest germ
of die doctrine of the Upanishads and consequently
of Indian philosophy.

13. In the Y&jftaTalkya chapters of Briha-
d&ranyaka and ther^ore in the oldest texts of the
Upanishads we find as the point of depar-

usm of tiie tare of the Upanishad doctrine a Tery hold
idealism comparable to that of Parmenides
in Greece, and culminating in the assertion that the atmoM
is the only reality and that nothing exists beyond it. The
whole doctrine may be simmied upinthreestatements : —

1. The only reality is the atman;

2. The Mman is the subject of knowledge in us;
8. The dhnan itself is unknowable.

1. All things in heaven and earth, gods, men, and
other beings exist only in so far as they form
a part of our atman; the dbnan must be seen,
heard, known; he who sees, hears, and knows
the Mman, knows in it all that exists ; as the sounds
of a musical instrament cannot be grasped, but
he who grasps the instrament, grasps also the
sounds, so he who knows the dtman knows in it

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS 25

all that exists ; that man Is lost and abandoned
by gods and men, who believes in the existence
of gods and men beyond the dtman.

2. This diman is neither more nor less than the seer
of seeing, the hearer of hearing, the knower of
knowing, in a word the subject of knowledge in
us, for this only is our real Self, which can never
by any means be taken away from us.

3. The diman, as the subject of knowledge in us,
is and remains unknowable in itself. ^Thou canst
not see the seer of seeing, thou canst not hear
the hearer of hearing, thou canst not know the
knower of knowing ; how could a man know that
by which he knows everything, how could he
know the knower."

14. The idealism of YAjfiayalkya denies, as we «/^
have seen, the existence of the world ; but this denial
could not be maintained in the long run.

PimthdisooL

The reality of the world forced itself on ^- ■
the beholder, and the problem was to recognize
it without abandoning the truth laid down by the
sage Yftjfiavalkya. This led to a second stage of develop-
ment which for want of a better name we may de-
nominate Pantheism. Its chief doctrine is that the world
is real, and yet the dhnan is the only reality, for the world
is the diman. This is the most current thesis in the
Upanishads and leads to very beautiful conceptions

26 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

like that in Chdnd. 3, 14 : ''The atmam is my soul in the
inner heart, smaller than a barley com, smaller than a
mustard-seed, smalls than a grain of miUet; and be
again is my sonl in the inner heart, lai^;^ than the
earth, larger than the atmosphere, larger thantheheayens
and all these worlds."

15. The equation world = Htman, notwithstand-
ing its constant repetition in theUpanishads, is
not a transparent one; for the dlman is an ab-
Bolnte unity, and the wiodd a plurality.

Coemogonisni -

How can they be regarded as identical?
This difficulty may have led later on to the attempt
to substitute for this incomprehensible ide ntity another
relation between Mman and wojld» .^iftt of causality. This
.thepry„opened.tlie.way to a new interpretation_of the old
myths of creation which consider the principle, PrajA-
pati or whatever it was, as the cause, and the world
as the effect. Accordingly the cosmogonies of the Upani-
shads teach us that in the beginning the dtman alone
existed ; the dtman thought, ''I will be manifold, I will
send forth worlds", and created all these worlds. Having
created them he entered into his creation as the soul,
as theUpanishads never fail to emphasize. We havecalled
this standpoint, finding no other name, Cosmogonismi
some might propose to call it Theism, but from this it is
essentially different. In the theistic view God creates the
soul like everything else, but in the case before us the

\

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI8HADS 27

8oal is not a creation of the aiiman but the ^Xman him*
self, who enters into his creation as the individnal soul.

16. The identity of the highest and the individual \^

aiman^ though perfectly true from the metaphysical
standpoint, remains incomprehensible for (^ ,

Theism

the empirical view of things; this view
distinguishes a plurality of souls different from
each other and from the highest ainMm^ the creative
power of the universe. This distinction between the
highest soul (paramS.tman) and the individual souls
(jivatman) is the characteristic feature of what we
may term the theism of certain later Upanishads.
It emerges for the first time in KMaka 3, 1, where
the two, God and the soul, are contrasted as light
and shadow, which intimates that the latter has no
reality of its own. 3ut the constantly growing realis-
tic tendencies went on sharpening this contrast,
until in the Qvetd.9vatara-Up. the highest soul,
I almighty and all-pervading as it is, is represented as
/ essentially different from the individual soul which,
\ limited and indigent, lives in the heart, smaller than
I the point of a needle, smaller than the ten- thousandth part
; of a hair ; and this, says thetext, ''becomesinfinity". Even
\ here God, though isolated and severed from the soul,
\ lives together with it in the heart. As two birds living on
the same tree, one of which feeds on the fruits of his works,
while the other abstains from eating and only looks on;

^

28 OUTLINES OP INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

thus the individiial soul, bewildered by his own impo-
tence and grieving, looks for the help of the highest
soul, or rather of his own divine and almighty- self.

17. Theism distinguishes three entities^ juDBaIjv:orld«.
a creative dtman and the individual diman dependent

on him. This duplication of the dtman ne-
cessarily had a pernicious influence on
one of the two branches, viz., on the highest
dtman, who in fact had always drawn his vital
force from the soul living in us. Separated from this
he became altogether superfluous, since the creative
powers attributed to him could be transferred without
difficulty to the primordial matter. Thus Ood disappeared
and there remained only a primeval creative matter
(prakriti) and opposed to it a plurality of indivi-
dual souls (purusha), entangled in it by an inex-
plicable fate and striving to emancipate themselves
from it by means of knowledge. This is exactly the
standpoint of the S&nkhya system. We see it shoot
up more and more exuberantly in the later Upani-
shads, especially in Maitrd^yaniya; but its full deve-
lopment is only attained in the post-Yedic period and
will be treated later. Before leaving the Veda we have
to speak of the moral and eschatological consequences
of the Vedic philosophy.

18. In contrast with the Semitic view, the belief
in the immortality of the soul has been from the old-

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHAD8 29

est times a patrimony of the Indo-Germanic race.
Even in the oldest hymns of the J^gveda YedioEMohai^
the hope is frequently expressed that logybefonthe
after death good men will go to the
gods to share their happy life. As for the wicked it
is their destiny, only darkly hinted at, to fall into
a deep abyss and disappear. The first mortal who
found the way to the luminous heights of the happy
other-world for all the following generations was
Yama, who, as king of the blessed dead, sits with
them under a leafy tree and passes the time in ca-
rousing; the analogous ideas of Jesus when He speaks
of sitting at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
in the future state are known to everybody. Different
stages of happiness for pious worshippers seem not y
to have been a part of the oldest creed. In the course
of time this was modified and the belief arose that
good and evil deeds find their corresponding rewards
and punishments in a future life. A very striking
passage of a BrdhmaTjM says: ^Whatever food a man
eats in this world, by that food he is eaten in the
next world." Among the evils which await the bad
man in the world to come we often find mentioned an in-
definite fear of dying again and again even in the
other world (punarmrityu). This notion of a repea-
ted death led on to the idea that it must be preceded
by a repeated life^ and in transferring this repeated

30 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

living and dying from the world beyond to the earth,
the Hindus came finally to that dogina which has
been in all subseqaent ages more characteristic of
India than anything else — the great doctrine of
metempsychosis. The first passage where this creed
clearly appears is in the Bfihaddranyaka-Up.; and it
discloses to us also the real motives of the remar-
kable dogma. YAjnavalkya, when asked what re-
mains of man after death, takes the interrogator by
the hand, leads him from th^^^MSsembly to a solitary
place, and reveals to him there the great secret:
"and what they spoke was work, and what they
praised was work; verily a man becomes holy by
holy works, wicked by wicked works." This passage
together with several others proves that the chief
motive of the dogma of transmigration was to explain
the different destinies of men by the supposition that
they are the fruits of merit and demerit in a pre-
ceding life.

19. A religion, after having come to a better view
of things, cannot discard the preceding and less per-
Deyeio mentof '®®* ^^^V^ of development which have led
this Doctrine in up to it. Thus the Ncw Testament cannot

the UpanUhadB ...,.- , ^, , «

emancipate itself from the Old Testament
and its very different spirit. So too the Upanishads,
after having come to the creed of metempsychosis,
had to retain at the same time the old Vedic creed

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS 31

of rewards and punishments in the other world. The
two views combined led to a complicated system,
which taught a two-fold reward and punishment, the
first in the world beyond, the second in a succeeding
life on earth. This theory is fully explained in the
so-called "doctrine of the Five Fires", an important
text found both in Chdnd. 6 and in Brih. 6. This {
combined theory of compensation distinguishes three \
ways after death — (1) the way of the fathers, (2) the
way of the gods, and (3) the "third place*'.

(1) The way of the fathers, destined for the per-
former of pious works, leads through the smoke of the
funeral pyre and a series of "dark" stations to the
placid realm of the moon, where the soul in commerce
with the gods, enjoys the fruit of its good works,
until they are consumed. As soon as the treasure of
good works is exhausted, the soul, through the inter-
mediate stations of ether, wind, fog, rain, plant, se-
men and womb passes to a new human existence, in
which once more the good and evil works of the pre-
vious life find their reward. ^

(2) The way of the gods is destined for those who
have spent their life in worshipping Brahman. They
go through the flame of the funeral pyre and a
series of "luminous" stations first to the sun, thence
"to the moon, from the moon to the lightning; there
is a spirit, he is not like a human being; he leads

n

32 OUTLINES OP INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

them to Brahman. For them there is no return'^ This
passage eyidently teaches that by the way of the
gods is attained the highest goal, the union with
Brahman. The later system, however, teaching that
the knower of Brahman stands higher than the wor-
shipper of Brahman, considers this nnion with Brah-
man, obtained by worshipping it, only as a step lea-
ding to the highest perfection, which the souls united
with Brahman obtain only after receiving in it per-
fect knowledge.

(3) For those who have neither worshipped Brah-
man nor performed good works the „third place" is
destined leading to a new life as lower animals —
worms, insects, snakes etc., after a previous punish-
ment in the different hells. Tins punishment in hell,
which is a later addition, is not found in the Upani-
shads and appears first in the system of the Yed&nta.
20. Transmigration is believed to be just as real as
the empirical world. But from a higher point of view

empirical reality together with creation and
j^l^^^Jj^ transmigration is only a great illusion; for

in truth there is no manifold, no world,
but only one being — the Brahman, the &tman. The
attainment of this knowledge is the highest aim of
man and in its possession consists the final liberation.
The knowledge is not the means of liberation, it is
liberation itself. He who has attained the conviction "I

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS 33

am Brahman'' has reached with it the knowledge that
he in himself is the totality of all that is, and conse-
quently he will not fear anything because there is nothing
beyond him; he will not injure anybody, for nobody
'injures himself by himself'. There are, properly speaking,
no means of attaining this knowledge; it comes of
itself; it is, in the yiew of the theistic Upanishads, a grace
of God. He who has obtained this knowledge continues
to live, for he must consume the fruits of his prece-
ding life; but life with its temptations can no longer
delude him. By the fire of knowledge his former works
are "burnt" and no new works can arise. He knows
that his body is not his body, his works are not his
works; for he is the totality of the dtmanif the divine
being, and when he dies, *'his spirit does not wander
any more, for Brahman is he, and into Brahman he is
resolved".

*'As rivers run and in the deep
Lose name and form and disappear
So goes, from name and form released.
The wise man to the deity."

DEUSSEN: PHILOSOPHY

THIRD PEEIOD
POST-VEDIC PHILOSOPHY

21. The thoughts of the Upanishads led in the

poBt-Vedic period not only to the two great religions

of Buddhism and Jainism but also to a

Oenenl Surrey

whole series of philosophical systems. Six
of these are considered as orthodox, because they
are believed to be reconcileable with the Vedic creed,
the others are rejected as heretical. The six ortho-
dox systems are: (1) the Sd.nkhyam of Eapila,
(2) the Yoga of Patafijali, (3) the NyAya of
Gotama, (4) the Yaigeshikam of Kand.da, (5) the
Mimd.nsd. of Jaimini, (6) the Yedd^nta of Bd.-
dard.yana. As for the heterodox systems, the most
important are Buddhism, Jainism, and the mate-
rialistic system of the Gd.rYd.ka6; several others
are nothing more than the Yedd^ntic views combined
with the popular creeds of Yishnuism or Qivaism.
But the six orthodox schools are not philosophical

POST-VEDIC PHILOSOPHY 36

systems either in the strict sense of the term. The
Mimd.nsd. is only a methodical handbook treat-
ing of the various questions arising out of the
complicated Yedic ritual. The Yoga is a systematic
exposition of the method of attaining union with the
dtman by means of concentration in oneself. The Ny-
&ya, though it treats incidentally of all kinds of philo-
sophical topics, is properly nothing more than a hand-
book of logic or better of disputation, furnishing a
canon for use in controversies. The Vai9eshikam,
giving a classification of existing things under six cate-
gories, is interesting enough, but more from a physical
than a philosophical point of view. The only systems of
metaphysical importance are the Sd^nkhyam and the
Vedd^nta; but even these are not to be considered as
original creations of the philosophical mind, for the
common basis of both and with them of Buddhism
and Jainism is to be found in the Upanishads; and
it is the ideas of the Upanishads which by a kind of
degeneration have developed into Buddhism on one
side and the Sftnkhya system on the other. Contrary
to both, the later yedd,nta of Bd.dard,yana and
^ankara goes back to the Upanishads and founds
on them t]iat great system of the Vedd^nta which we
have to consider as the ripest fruit of Indian wisdom.
22. From the Veda to the later systems leads a
philosophical development the history of which, for

36 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

want of special documents, must be supplied from the
vast bulk of the Mahd.bhd.ratam. Here we

The PhiloBophy

of the find, in the Bhagavadgitd. (Book vi.), the

* Sanatsu j&tapar van (Book V. 1566 ff.), the

Mokshadharma (Book xii.) and other texts, the ma-
terials which, though in an earlier form than that of
the MahdbMratam, have formed the common base of
Buddhism and SMkhyam. The philosophical system
of the Mahdhhdratami whether we call it epic S&n-
khyam or realistic Veddniaf is the common mother
of both. Some scholars maintain that the religion of
Buddha is an off -shoot of the S&nkhya system, others
that Buddhism is anterior to the SdnJehyam. Both are
right. Buddhism certainly precedes what we call now
the S&nkhya system, but it depends on what is called
Sdnkhyam in the Mahdhhdratam. Originally Sd^nkhyam
(calculation, reflection) does not mean a certain philoso-
phical system but philosophical enquiry in general;
it is the opposite of Yoga, which means the attainment
of the dtnum by means of concentration in oneself. The
words are thus used where they occur for the first
time (Qvet. 6, 13), and it is an open question, demanding
further research, whether not only in the Bhagavadgitd
but also throughouttheMahdhMratam thewoTdsSdnkhyam
and Yoga are not so much names of philosophical systems,
as general terms for the two methods of reflection and
concentration. Without entering into details we may

POST-VEDIC PHILOSOPHY 37

say that even in the Mdhdbhdraiam the primordial matter
(prakriti) is opposed to a plurality of souls (purusha);
but both are more or less slightly dependent onBr ahman
as on the highest principle. This is the starting point both
of the later SMkhyam which rejects Brahman as the
connecting link, and of Buddhism which denies not
only God but also the soul.

23. The success of Buddhism in India was due in
part to the overwhelming personality of its founder,
in part to the breaking down of caste preju-
dices by which he opened the road to salva-

Baddhism

tion to the great masses of the population.
Only in small measure did the Buddhism owe this success
to the originality of its ideas, for almost all its essential
theories had their predecessors in the Yedic and epic
periods. The fundamental idea of Buddhism, laid down
in the four holy truths, is this — that we can extinguish
the pains of existence only by extinguishing our thirst
for existence. The same idea is put forth in the 12
Nidd.nas, which by a series of steps go back from
the pains of life to the thirst for life and from this
to ignorance as the ultimate cause of thirst and pain
altogether. We see in these and many other Buddhistic
ideas only a new form of what Yd.jfiavalkya teaches
in the Bfih.'Up. and if Buddhism in its opposition to
the Brahmanical creed goes so far as to deny soul,
this denial is only apparent, since Buddhism maintains

38 OUTLINES OP INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

the theory of transmlgratioii effected by karman, the
work of the preceding existence. This karman mnst have
in every case an individual bearer and that is wliat
the ITpanishads call the c^^mai^ and what the Buddhists
inconsistently deny. A common feature of Buddhism
and S&nkhyam is that they both regard pain as the
starting point of philosophical enquiry, thus clearly
showing the secondary character of both. For philosophy
has its root in the thirst for knowledge and it is a
symptom of decadence inlndiaas in Greece whenit begins
to be considered as a remedy for the pains of life.

24. There are many other features in the Sd.nkhya
system which show clearly that it is not, as has been
The iMXm generally held up to the present, the original
sankhya creation of an individual philosophical ge-

^ nius, but only the final result of a long process

of degeneration, as has already been shown. The theism
of the ITpanishads had separated the highest soul from
the individual soul, opposing to them a primordial matter.
After the elimination of the highest soul there remained
two principles — (1) prakriti, primeval matter, and (2)
a plurality of purushas or subjects of knowledge. This
dualism, as the starting-point of the Sdnkhya system,
is in itself quite incomprehensible; it becomes intel-
ligible only by its development as shown before.
The aim of man is the emancipation of the purusha
from t\i^ prakfiti ; and this is attained by the knowledge

POST-VEDIC PHILOSOPHY 39

that purusha and praJcTiU are totally different, and that
all the pains of life, being only modifications of prakritif
do not affect the punisha in the least. To awaken this
consciousness in the purusha, prakriti unfolds its
essence to it anew in every life, producing by gradual
cYolution the cosmic intellect (Mah&n or Buddhi),
from this the principle of individuation (Ahankd.r a),
from this mind, organs of sense, and the rudiments,
and from the latter material objects. Theptsrtuha be-
holds this evolution of prakfiti ; if he understands that
prakriti is different from himself he is emancipated,
if not he remains in the circle of transmigration and
buffering. The whole system seems to be based on an
original assumption that there is only one purusha and
one prakfiH by the separation of which the final aim
is attained for both. The pretended plurality of f^uru^Ao^
looks like a later addition ; and we do not understand
how the one and indivisible prakfiii develops its being
before every single purusha again and again to help him in
his emancipation, if there always remains an innumerable
quantity of unemancipated purushas. If we add to this the
fact that all the other elements of the system including the
three gun as can be derived from the Upanishad doctrine,
we can no longer hesitate to admit thatthe whole Sdnkhya
system is nothing but a result of the degeneration of the
Yed&nta by means of the growth of realistic tendencies.
There seems to have been a time when VedAntic thought

40 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

lived only in this realistic form of the SAnkhy a; for when the
Yoga took the form of a philosophical system it was built
up on the very inconvenient base of the Sd.nkhya system,
probably because at that time no other base was available.
25. The genesis of the Yedd^nta-system, represented
by Bd.darAyana and Qankara^ has many analogies
The System of with the Reformation in the Christian Church,
the vedanu j^ ^^^ same way as Luther and others re-
jected the various traditions of the medieval Church
and based the Protestant creed on the pure word of
the Bible, so (^ankara (bom 788 A. D.) rejected the
changes in Yedic doctrine brought about by Buddhism
and Sdnkhya and founded the great system that bears
his name on the holy word of the Upanishads alone;
but in doing this a great difficulty arose; for the
Upanishads, the words of which are in the view of
(^ankara a divine revelation, contain not only the
pure idealism of Yftjliavalkya but also its later modi-
fications such as pantheism, cosmogonism and theism.
In meeting this difficulty (JJankara exhibits great philo-
sophical astuteness, which may serve as a model for
Christian theology in future times; he distinguishes
throughout an esoteric system (paravidyA) containing
a sublime philosophy, and an exoteric system (apara-
vidyft) embracing under the wide mantle of a theo-
logical creed all the fanciful imaginings which spring
in course of time from the original idealism. The exo-

POST-VEDIC PHILOSOPHY 41

teric system gives a description of the Brahman in
the richest colom*s, treating it in part as the pantheistic
sonl of the world, and in part as a personal god; it
gives a full account of the periodical creation and
reabsorption of the world and of the never-ending circle
of transmigration, etc. The esoteric system on the con-
trary maintains with Yd.jliavalkya that Brahman, or the
dtman is absolutely unknowable and attainable only
by the concentration of yoga, that there is from the
highest standpoint neither creation nor world, neither
transmigration nor plurality of souls, and that com-
plete liberation is reached by him and by him alone
who has awakened to the beatific consciousness, ex-
pressed in the words of the Upanishads: ''A ham
Brahma asmi*' (I am Brahman).

Thus the Indians in their Yed&nta possess a theo-
logical and philosophical system satisfying not only the
wants of the people, but also the demands of a mind
accessible to true knowledge only in its purest form.

ON THE
PHILOSOPHY OP THE VEDANTA

IN ITS

RELATIONS TO OCCTOENTAL METAPHYSICS

AN ADDBESS DEUYEBED BEFOBE THE BOMBAY

BBAKCH OF THE BOYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY

25.FEBBUABY 1898.

o

INTRODUCTION

N my journey through |India I have noticed with
^satisfaction, that in philosophy till now our
brothers in the East have maintained a very good
tradition, better perhaps, than the more active but
less contemplative branches of the great Indo-Aryan
family in Europe, where Empirism, Realism and their
natural consequence. Materialism, grow from day to
day more exuberantly, whilst metaphysics, the very
centre and heart of serious philosophy, are supported
only by the few who have learned to brave the spirit
of the age.

In India the influence of this perverted and per-
versive spirit of our age has not yet overthrown in
religion and philosophy the good traditions of the
great ancient time. It is true, that most of the an-
cient dargana*s even in India find only an historical
interest; followers of the Sd^nkhya-System occur rarely;
Nyftya is cultivated mostly as an intellectual sport
and exercise, like grammar or mathematics, — but

46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDANTA

the Yed&nta is, now as in the ancient time, living
in the mind and heart of every thoughtfol Hindoo.
It is true, that even here in the sanctuary of Yed&ntic
metaphysics, the realistic tendencies, natnral to man,
have penetrated, producing the misinterpreting vari-
ations of ^ankara's Advaita, known under the names
Yigishtd^dvaita, Dvaita, 9^ddhd.dvaita of Ed.md.nuja,
Mftdhva, Vallabha, — but India till now has not yet
been seduced by their voices, and of hundred VedAn-
tins (I have it from a well informed man, who is
himself a zealous adversary of (^ankara and follower
of RSmd^nuja) fifteen perhaps adhere to Edrntouja, five
to Madhva, five to Vallabha, and seventy-five to ^an-
kard^chdrya.

This fact may be for poor India in so many mis-
fortunes a great consolation ; for the eternal interests
are higher than the temporary ones ; and the System
of the Yedd^nta, as founded on the Upanishads and
Yedd^nta Siitras and accomplished by Qankara's commen-
taries on them, — equal in rank to Plato and Kant —
is one of the most valuable products of the genius of
mankind in his researches of the eternal truth, — as
I propose to show now by a short sketch of Qankara's
Advaita and by comparing its principal doctrines with
the best that occidental philosophy has produced till now.

Taking the Upanishads, as Qankaradoes, for revealed
truth with absolute authority, it was not an easy task

\

INTRODUCTION 47

to build out of their materials a consistent philosophi-
cal system, for the Upanishads are in Theology, Kos-
mology and Psychology fall of the hardest contradic-
tions. So in many passages the nature of Brahman is
painted in various and luxuriant colours, and again
we read, that the nature of Brahman is quite unat-
tainable to human words, te human understanding;

— so we meet sometimes long reports explaining how
the worid has been created by Brahman, and again
we are told, that there is no world besides Brahman,
and all variety of things is mere error and illusion;

— so we have fanciful descriptions of the Samsdra,
the way of the wandering soul up to the heaven and
back to the earth, and again we read, that there is
no SamsAra, no variety of souls at all, but only one
Atman, who is fully and totally residing in every being.

Qankara in these difficulties created by the nature
of his materials, in face of so many contradictory
doctrines, which he was not allowed to decline and
yet could not admit altogether, — has found a wonder-
ful device, which deserves the attention, perhaps the
imitation of the Christian dogmatists in their embarass-
ments. He constructs out of the materials of the Upa-
nishads two systems, one esoteric, philosophical
(called by him nirgufid vidyd, sometimes pdramdrthikd
avasthd) containing the metaphysical truth for the few
ones, rare in all times and countries, who are able to

48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDInTA

understand it; and another exoteric, theological
(sagui^d vidydf vydvahdriki avasthd) for the general public,
who want images, not abstract truth, worship, not
meditation.

I shall now point out briefly the two systems, esoteric
and exoteric, in pursuing and confronting them through
the four chief parts, which ^Ankara's system contains,
and every complete philosophical systemmust contain : —
I. Theology, the doctrine of God or of the philo-
sophical principle,
n. Cosmology, the doctrine of the world,
ni. Psychology, the doctrine of the soul.
IV. Eschatology, the doctrine of the last things,
the things after death.

C3HAPTEE I
THEOLOGY

The Upanlshads swarm with fanciful and contara-
dictory descriptions of the nature of Brahman. He
is the all-pervading ftkd^a, is the pumsha in the sun,
the purusha in the eye; his head is the heaven, his
eyes are sun and moon, his breath is the wind, his
footstool the earth; he is infinitely great as soul of
the universe and infinitely small as the soul in us;
he is in particular the igvara, the personal God, distri-
buting justly reward and punishment according to
the deeds of man. All these numerous descriptions
are collected by Qankara under the wide mantle of
the exoteric theology, the sagu7}d vidyd of Brahman,
consisting of numerous "vidy&s" adapted for approach-
ing the eternal being not by the way of know-
ledge but by the way of worshipping, and having
each its particular fruits. Mark, that also the concep-
tion of God as a personal being, an icvara, is merely

DEUSSEN: PHILOSOPHY 4

50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDANTA

exoteric and does not give us an adequate knowledge
of theAtman; — and indeed, when we consider what
is personality, how narrow in its limitations, how
closely connected which egotism, the counter part of
godly essence, who might think so low of God, to
impute him personality?

In the sharpest contrast to these exoteric vidy&s
stands the esoteric nirgur^d vidyd of theAtman; and
its fundamental tenet is the absolute inaccessibility
of God to human thoughts and words;

and again:

and the celebrated formula occurring so often in
BrihadAranyaka-TJpanishad: neti! neU! viz., whatever
attempt you make to know the Atman, whatever
description you give of him, I always say: naiU^ na
id, it is not so, it is not so! Therefore the wise Bfthva,
when asked by the king Y&shkalin, to explain the
Brahman, kept silence. And when the king repeated
his request again and again, the rishi broke out into
the answer: ''I tell it you, but you don't understand
it; gdnto 'yam dtmdf this Atm& is silence!" We know
it now by the Kantian philosophy, that the answer
of B&hva was correct, we know it, that the very orga-

THEOLOGY 51

nisation of our intellect (which is bound once for ever
to its innate forms of perception, space, time, and cau-
sality) excludes us from a knowledge of the spaceless,
timeless, godly reality for ever and ever. And yet
the Atman, the only godly being is not unattainable
to us, is even not far from us, for we have it fully
and totally in ourselves as our own metaphysical
entity; and here, when returning from the outside
and apparent world to the deepest secrets of our own
nature, we may come to God, not by knowledge,
but by anubhava, by absorption . into our own self.
There is a great difference between knowledge, in'\
which subject and object are distinct from each other,
and anubhava, where subject and object coincide in !
the same. He who by anubhava comes to the great J
intelligence, "aJiam hrahma a$mi'\ obtain» a state called
by 99'Ukara Sainrddhanam, accomplished satisfaction;
and indeed, what might he desire, who feels and
knows himself as the sum and totality of all existence!

CHAPTER n
COSMOLOGY

H^re again we meet the distinction of exoteric and
esoteric doctrine, though not so clearly severed by
^ankara as in other parts of his system.

The exoteric Ck>smology according to the natu-
ral but erroneous realism (avidyA) in which we are
bom, considers this world as the reality, and can
express its entire dependency on Brahman only
by the mythical way of a creation of the world
by Brahman. So a temporal creation of the world,
even as in the Christian documents, is also taught
in various and well-known passages of the Upa-
nishads. But such a creation of the material world
by an immaterial cause, performed in a certain point
of time after an eternity elapsed uselessly, is not only
against the demands of human reason and natural
science, but also against another important doctrine
of the Ved&nta, which teaches and must teach (as we
shall see hereafter) the ^'beginninglessness of the

COSMOLOGY 53

migration of souls '\ satj^sdrasya andditvam. Here the
expedient of ^Ankara is very clever and worthy of
imitation. Instead of the temporary creation once for
ever of the TJpanishads, he teaches that the world
in great periods is created and reabsorbed by Brah-
man (referring to the misunderstood verse of the "^ig-
veda: 4J^*|ff|»RH*ff t^pfT 5ron#H*W|«iq); this mutual crea-
tion and reabsorption lasts from eternity, and no
creation can be allowed by our system to be the
first and that for good reasons, as we shall see just
now. — If we ask: Why has God created the world?
the answers to this question are generally very un-
satisfactory. For his own glorification? How may we
attribute to him so much vanity! — For his particular
amusement? But he was an eternity without this play-
thing! — For love of mankind? How may he love a
thing before it exists, and how may it be ealled love, to
create millions for misery and eternal pain! — The
VedAnta has a better answer. The never ceasing new-
creation of the world is a moral necessity connec-
ted with the central and most valuable doctrine of
the exoteric Vedtota, the doctrine of Sanis&ra.

Man, says (^ankara, is like a plant. He grows,
flourishes and at the end he dies; but not totally.
For as the plant, when dyiujg^, leaves behind it the
seed, vfrom which, according to its quality, a new planf
grows, — so man, when dying, leaves his karma, the

64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDAnTA

good and bad works of his life, which mnst be re-
warded and punished in another life after this. No
life can be the furst, for it is the fruit of previous
actions, nor the last, for its actions must be expiated
in a next following life. So the Sains&ra is without
beginning and without end, and the new creation of
the world after every absorption into Brahman is a
moral necessity. I need not point out, in India less
than anywhere, the high value of this doctrine of
SamsAra as a consolation in the afflictions as a moral
agent in the temptations of life, — I have to say
here only, that the Samsdra, though not the absolute
truth, is a mythical representative of a truth which
in itself is unattainable to our intellect; mythical is
this theory of metempsychosis only in so far as it
invests in the forms of space and time what really
is spaceless and timeless, and therefore beyond the
reach of our understanding. So the Saiiis&ra is just
so far from the truth, as the saguTjid vidyd is from the
fdrguf^ vidyd] it is the eternal truth itself, but (since
we cannot conceive it otherwise) the truth in an alle-
gorical form, adapted to our human understanding.
And this is the character of the whole exoteric Ye-
ddnta, whilst the esoteric doctrine tries to find out
the philosophical, the absolute truth.
A And so we come to the esoteric Cosmology, whose
^simple doctrine is this, that in reality there is no

COSMOLOGY 56

manifold world, but only Brahman, and that what we
consider as the world, is a mere illusion (mdyd) similar
to a mrigatTiahipM^ which disappears when we approach
it, and not more to be feared than the rope, which
we took in the darkness for a serpent. There are, as
you see, many similes in the Ved&nta, to illustrate
the illusive character of this world, but the best of
them is perhaps, when Qankara compares our life
with a long dream; — a man whilst dreaming does
not doubt oft the reality of the dream, but this reality
disappears in the moment of awakening, to give place
to a truer reality, which we were not aware of whilst
dreaming. The life a dream! this has been the thought
of many wise men from Pindar and Sophocles to
Shakspere and Calderon de la Barca, but nobody has
better explained this idea, than Qankara. And indeed,
the moment when we die may be to nothing so similar
as to the awakening from a long and heavy dream;
it may be, that then heaven and earth are blown away
like the nightly phantoms of the dream, and what
then may stand before us? or rather in us? Brahman,
the eternal reality, which was hidden to us till then
by. this dream of life! — This world is mAya, is illu-
sion; is not the very reality, that is the deepest thought
of the esoteric Ved&nta, attained not by calculating
tarha but by anubhavoj by returning from this varie-
gated world to the deep recess of our own self (Aiman).

66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDInTA

Do 80, if you can, and you will get aware of a rea-
lity very different from empirical reality, a timeless, spa-
celess, changeless reality, and you will feel and expe-
rience that whatever is outside of this only true
reality, is mere appearance, is m&yft, is a dream! — This
was the way the Indian thinkers went, and by a
similar way, shown by Parmenides, Plato came to the
same truth, when knowing and teaching that this
; ;' world is a world of shadows, and that the reality is
\ I not in these shadows, but behind them. The accord
I I here of Platonism and Vedantism is wonderful, but
both have grasped this great metaphysical truth by
intuition; their tenet is true, but they are not able
to prove it, and in so far they are defective. And
here a great light and assistance to the Indian and
the Greek thinker comes from the philosophy of
Kant, who went quite another way, not the Vedantic
and Platonic way of intuition, but the way of abstract
reasoning and scientific proof. The great work of
Elant is an analysis of human mind, not in the super-
ficial way of Locke, but going to the very bottom
of it. And in doing so, Kant found, to the surprise
of the world and of himself, that three essential ele-
ments of this outside world, viz., space, time, and
causality, are not, as we naturally believe, eternal
fundamentals of an objective reality, but merely «ub-.
jective innate perceptual forms of our own intellect.

COSMOLOGY 57

This has been proved by Kant and by his great dis-
ciple Schopenhauer with mathematical evidence, and
I have given these proofs (the base of all scienti-
' fie metaphysics) in the shortest and clearest form
in my "Elemente der Metaphysik" — a book which
,1 am resolved now to get translated into BInglish*, for
'the benefit not of the Europeans (who may learn
German) but of my brothers in India, who will be
;. greatly astonished to find in Germany the scientific
substruction of their own philosophy, of the Advaita
YedAnta! For Kant has demonstrated, that space, time
and causaHty are not objective realities, but only sub-
) jective forms of our intellect, and the xmavoidable
; conclusion is this, that the world, as far as it is ex-
f tended in space, running on in time, ruled'thrbughout
by causality, in so far is merely a representation
\ of my mind and nothing beyond it. Tou"*8ee the"A
\ concordance orindian, Greek and German metaphy- f
\ sics; the world is mAy&, is illusion, says Qankara; —
' it is a world of shadows, not of realities, says JPtaio;
\ — it is ^appearance only, not the thing in itself",
f says Kant Here we have the same doctrine in three
/ different parts of the world, but the scientific proofs of
it are not in Qankara, not in Plato, but only in Kant.

* The Elements of Metaphysics, translated into English by
0. M. Dnff. London 1894.

CHAPTER m
PSYCHOLOGY

Here we convert the order and begin with the esoteric
Psychology, because it is closely connected with the esote-
ric Cosmology and its fundamental doctrine : the world
is mdyd. All is illusive, with one exception, with the
exception of my own Self, of my Atman. My Atman
cannot be illusive, as ^s^nkara shows, anticipating the
^'cogito, ergo sum" of Descartes, — for he who would deny
it, even in denying it, witnesses its reality. But what
is the relation between my individual soul, the Jivar
Atman, and the highest soul, the Parama-Atman or
Brahman ? Here ^^^kara, like a prophet, foresees the
deviations of Mm&nuja, M^dhya and Vallabha and
refutes them in showing, that the Jiva cannot be a
part of 3rahman (R&m&nuja), because Brahman is
without parts (for it is timeless and spaceless, and all
parts are either successions in time or co-ordinations
in space, — as we may add), — neither a different

PSYCHOLOGY 69

thing from Brahman (M&dhva), for Brahman is eham
eva advMyanit as we may experience by anubhavay —
nor a metamorphose- of Brahman (Vallabha), for
Brahman is unchangeable (for, as we know now by Kant,
it is out of causality). The conclusion is, that the Jiva
being neither a part nor a different thing, nor a vari-
ation of Brahman, must be the Param&tman fully
and totally himself, a conclusion made equally by/
the Yedftntin 9^^^^^* ^7 t^® Platonic Plotinos, ana
by the Kantian Schopenhauer. But (^ankara in hia
conclusions goes perhaps further than any of them.
If really our soul, says he, is not a part of Brahmanl
but Brahman himself, then all the attributes of Brahman,/
all-pervadingness, eternity, all-migthiness (scientifically^
spoken : exemption of space, time, causality) are ours ;',
aham hrahma asmiy I am Brahman, and consequentlyj
I am all-pervading (spaceless), eternal (timeless), al-j
migthy (not limited in my doing by causality). Bui
these godly qualities are hidden in me, says Qankara|
as the fire is hidden in the wood, and will appeal
only after the final deliverance. ^

What is the cause of this concealment of my godly
nature ? The Upftdhi's, answers Qankara, and with this
answer we pass from the esoteric to] the exoteric
psychology. The UpAdhi's are manas and indriya's,
prtoa with its five branches, stikshmam (arlram, — in
short, the whole psychological apparatus, which toge-

60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDInTA

ther with a factor changeable from birth to birth, with
my karman, accompanies myAtman in all his ways
Qf migration, without infecting his godly nature, as
the crystal is not infected by the colour painted over
it. But wherefrom originate these Up&dhi*s ? They form
of course part of the mdyd, the great world-illusion,
and like mdyd they are based on our innate avidyd or
ignorance, a merely negative power and yet strong
enough to keep us from our godly existence. But now,
from where comes this avidyd, this primeval cause of
ignorance, sin, and misery ? Here all philosophers in
India and Greece and everywhere have been defective,
until Kant came to show us that the whole question
is inadmissible. You ask for the cause of avidyd, but
it has no cause; for causality goes only so far as
this world of the SamsS^ra goes, connecting each link
of it with another, but never beyond Samsdra and its
fundamental characteristic, the avidyd. In enquiring
after a cause of avidyd with mdyd, Samsdra and Upd,-
dhi*s, you abuse, as Kant may teach us, your innate
mental organ of causality to penetrate into a region
for which it is not made, and where it is no more
available. The fact is, that we are here in ignorance,
sin and misery, and that we know the way " out of
them, but the question of a cause for them is senseless.

CHAPTER IV
ESCHATOLOGY

And now a few words about this way out of the
Saips&ra, and first about the exoteric theory of it.
In the ancient time of the hymns there was no idea
of Samsdra but only rewards in heaven and (somewhat
later) punishments in a dark region ^adam gahMram),
the precursor of the later hells. Then the deep theory
of Saips&ra came up, teaching rewards and punishment
in the form of a new birth on earth. The Veddnta
combines both theories, and so it has a double ex-
piation, first in heaven and hell, and then again in
a new existence on the earth. This double expiation
is different (1) for performers of good works, going
the pitfiydnaf (2) for worshippers of the sagunam brah-
ma, going the devaydna, (3) for wicked deeds, leading
to what is obscurely hinted at in the Upanishads as
the triUyain sOidnam, the third place. (1) The pitriydna
leads through a succession of dark spheres to the moon,
there to enjoy the fruit of the good works and, after

62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDANTA

their consumption, back to an earthly existence.
(2) The devaydna leads through a set of brighter
spheres to Brahman, without returning to the earth
(^r ^ ^niitf^O' ^^* t^^s Brahman is only sagu^am
brahma, the object of worshipping, and its true wor-
shippers, though entering into this sagunam brahma
without returning, have to wait in it until they get
moksha by obtaining samyagdarganamf the full knowledge
of the nirgunam brahma. (3) The tpMyarifi sihdnamy inclu-
ding the later theories of hells, teaches punishment in
them, and again punishment by returning to earth in the
form of lower castes, animals, and plants. All these vari-
ous and fantastical ways of Sams&ra are considered as
true, quite as true as this world is, but not more. For the
whole world and the whole way of Samsdra is valid and
true for those only who are in the avidyd, not for those
who have overcome it, as we have to show now.

The esoteric Ved&nta does not admit the reality of the
world nor of the SamsHra, for the only reality is Brahman,
seized|in ourselves as our own Atman. The knowledge
of this Atman, the great intelligence: "aham hrdhma
asmi", does not produce moksha (deliverance), but is
moksha itself. Then we obtain what the TJpanishad say :

. ESCHATOLOGY 63

When seeing Brahma as the highest and the lowest
everywhere, all knots of our heart, all sorrows are
split, all doubts vanish, and our works become nothing.
Certainly no man can live without doing work, and
so also the Jivanmukta; but he knows, that all these
works are illusive, as this whole world is, and there-
fore they do not adhere to him nor produce for him
a new life after death. — And what kind of work may
such a man do? — People have often reproached the
Vedftnta with being defective in morals, and indeed,
the Indian genius is too contemplative to speak much
of deeds ; but the fact is nevertheless, that the highest
and purest morality is the immediate consequence of
the Yedftnta. The Gospels fix quite correctly as the
highest law of morality : "love your neighbour as your-
selves." But why should I do so, since by the order
of nature I feel pain and pleasure only in myself, not
in my neighbour? The answer is not in the Bible (this
venerable book being not yet quite free of Semitic
realism), but it is in the Veda, is in the great formula
^^iat ivam asi", which gives in three words metaphysics
and morals altogether. You shall love your neighbour as
yourselves, — because you are your neighbour, and
mere illusion makes you believe, that your neighbour
is something different from yourselves. Or in the words
of the Bhagavadg!t&h : he, who knows himself in every-
thing and everything in himself, will not injure him-

64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDInTA

self by himself, na hinasH dimana dtmdnam. This is the
sum and tenor of all morality, and this is the standpoint of
a man knowing himself as Brahman. He feels himself
everything, — so he will not desire anything, for
he has whatever can be had; — he feels himself
everything, — so he wiD not injure anything, for
nobody injures himself. He lives in the world, is sur-
rounded by its illusions but not deceived by them:
like the man suffering from Umiraf who sees two moons
but knows that there is one only, so the Jivanmukta
sees the manifold world and cannot get rid of seeing
it, but he knows, that there is only one being, Brah-
man, the Atman, his own Self, and he verifies it by
his deeds of pure disinterested morality. And ^ he
expects his end, as the potter expects the end of the
twirling of his wheel, after the vessel is ready. And
then, for him, when death comes, no more Saxiisdra :
H rT'Rl STTTT 4^f|>7 * » f^ I WIT q^ ^T^ ITW »I«W^I He enters
into brahman, like the streams into the ocean:

he leaves behind him ndma and riSpam, he leaves behjlnd
him individuality, but he does not leave behind him his
Aiman, his Self. It is not the falling of the drop into

ESCHATOLOGY 66

the infinite ocean, it is the whole ocean, becoming
free from the fetters of ice, returning from its frozen
state to that what it is really and has never ceased to be,
to its own all-pervading, eternal, all-mighty nature.

And so the Ved^nta, in its pure and unfalsified form, /
isithe strongest support of pure morality, is the greatest I
consolation in the sufferings of life and death, — Indians, j
keep to iti —

DEUSSEN: PHILOSOPHY

INDEX

OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS.

Page
^ A.

ft^rama's (stages of life) * 5
Agvin's (gods of the twilight) 8
adyaitam (monism) ... 46

Agni (fire) 9

aham biahma asmi (I am

Brahman). . 41.51.59.62
Ahankfira (principle of indi-
viduation) 39

annbhaya (intuition) ... 51
aparayidya(exoteric8ystem) 40

Atharyaveda 6

Atheism 28

Itman (Self) . 17. 20. 58. 62
ayidy& 60

B.

Bfidar&yaoa 34. 40

B&hya 50

Bhagayadgita 63

Bhag&yadgit& Yl .... 36

Bible 21.63

Biblical dogma 3

p»g«
Brahman (prayer) = Atman

17 sq. 18. 19 sq. 22. 41. 49
Brdimia9a's (Vedic ritnal

works) 6. 17. 21

Brihad&ra^yaka-^pani8had

22. 28. 30. 37

Brih. Up. 1, 4
» » 2, 4

« » 6 •
Buddha . .
Buddhism .

6.34

. 24
. 24
. 31
. 36
37 sq.

Calderon de la Barca . . 55

Qarikara 35. 40

C&ryaka's 34

Caste 5. 37

Categories 35

Ceylon 6

Ch&ndogya-Upanishad 22. 23
Ch&nd. Up. 3, 14 26

n » 5 31

Christian dogmatists ... 47

INDEX

67

Page

ChiiBtianity 4

Christian theology .... 40

^ivaism 34

cogito, ergo sum .... 58

Concentration 35

Cosmogony and Cosmo-

gonism 26

Creation 18. 52

QuddhMvaitam (purified

monism) ....... 46

Qyetftgyatara-Upanishad . 27

gvet. Up. 6, 13 36

darganam (philosophical sys-
tem) 45

Deocan 5

Descartes 58

devayfina 61 sq.

Dream of life 55

Dualism 38

dvaitam (dualism) .... 46
dyans (heaven) 7

E.

Egypt 18

ekam eya adyitiyam (one

without a second) ... 59
Elements (bhilta's) .... 39
Emancipation (moksha) 33. 38
Eschatology . . . 28 sq. 61 sq.

Page
P.

Faith 11

Four holy truths .... 37

a.

Ganges 5

Geography of India . . 4sq.

Gods, their original nature 9
gop& ritasya (guardians of

morality) 10

Gotama 34

Grace 33

Greek philosophy .... 3

gu^a 39

H.

Hell 32.61

Him&laya 6

Hindu Rush 5

Hindustan 5

Homer 7

I.

I am Brahman 33

t^yara (personal god) . . 49

Idealism 24sq.

Ignorance (avidyft) ... 37

Illusion (mfiy&) 32

Immortality 28sq.

Indian philosophy ... 3. 4
Indra (god of the thunder-
storm) .... 7. 9. 11 sq.

indriya's 59

Indus 5

98

INDEX

J.

Page

Jaimini 84

JainiBin 6. 34

Janaka, king 24

Jehovah 13

Jesus 29

Jiyanmiikta(emancipated in

life) 63

jtv&tman (indiyidual soul) 27

Jones, Sir William ... 4

E.

k&ma (love) 14

Ka^&da 34

Kant 46. 66. 60

Kantian philosophy . 4. 50 sq.

KapHa 34

karman (work) . 38. 53 sq. 60
K&thaka-Upanishad ... 22

K&th.Up.3, 1 .27

Eomorin 5

Kosmology 52sq.

L.

Logic 35

A^yoe 19

Luther 40

X.

Madhva 46. 58

Mah&bh&ratam 36

Mahan(aBuddhi, cosmic in-
tellect) 39

Page
MaitIaya^iya-Upani8had . 28

manas (mind) .59

Marusthala 5

Marut's (storm-gods) ... 9

Materialism 34. 45

m&y& 55. 60

Medieval philosophy ... 3

Metaphysics 45

Metempsychosis (saius&ra) . 30

Mlm&ns& 34. 35

Mind (manas) 39

Mitra (the benevolent light

of the sun) 8

Modem philosophy ... 3

moksha 62

Moksha dharmaXn ... 36

Monism 18

Monotheism, of different

kinds 13

Morals 9.63

Moses 4

mrigat]:islmik& (mirage) . 55
Muu^aka-Upanishad ... 22

N.
neti! neti! . . i . . . . 50
New Testament ... 21. 30

Nidfiua's 37

nirgu9& vidy& (esoteric doc-
trine) 47etc

Ny&ya 34. 35. 45

INDEX

69

Page

o.

Old Testament . . . i. 7. 21
Organs of sense (indriya^s) 39
Orthodox systems, six . . 34

P.

Pain of life 38

Palestine 13

Panjab 5

Pantheism 25 sq.

param&rthika avasthfi

(metaphysical standpoint) 47

param&tman(higheBtsoul)27. 59

paravidyft (esoteric system) 40

Paijanya (rain-god) ... 9

Parmenides 24. 56

Patafijali . 34

Persian religion 4

Pindar 55

pitriyana 61 sq.

Plato 46.56

Platonism 4

Plotinos 59

Praj&pati (lord of crea-
tures) 16. 17sq.

prakriti (primordial mat-
ter) 28. 37. 38

pr&va (vital breath) ... 59

prithiyl (earth) 7

Psychology . . . . 58sq.
punar-mrityu (repeated
death) 29

Page
pumsha (man, sool, subject

of knowledge) . 28. 37. 88
Ptlshan (the nourisher) . . 8
Pythagoras 4

B.

R&m&nuja 46. 58

Reformation 40

Beligion 7

Bigveda (Veda of verses) 5, 78q.

Bigvedal, 164 13

' n n,12 11

n IV, 42 8

„ VII, 103 .... 12
„ IX, 112 ..... 11

„ X, 82 12

„ X, 117 10

„ X, 119 12

„ X, 121 ..... 16

„ X, 129 .... 138q

^ X, 151 ..... 11

Rudiments (tanmatra's) . 39

Budra (god of the thunder

bolt) 9

S.

sagiUL& Tidy& (exoteric doc-
trine) 47etc.

Samaveda (Veda of songs) 6
Samhit&'s of the Veda . 6. 21

Saipr&dhanam 51

saips&ra 47. 53sq.

70

INDEX

Page
samyag darQanam . • . . 62
Sanatsig&taparyan V, 1565. 36
S&nkhyam 34. 35. 36. 388q. 45
Savitai (the arouser) ... 8
Schopenhauer .... 57. 59

Semitic creed 3

Shakspere 55

Soma (ritual drink) ... 9

Sophocles 55

flfikshmaiu Qariram (suhtle

body) 59

Strya (sun) 8

tapas (heat, asceticism) . 15
tarka (reflection) .... 55

tat tyam asi 63

Theism 27. 38

Theology ....... 49sq.

Third place (trittyaiu sth&-

nam) 31. 6l8q.

Thirst (trish^&) 37

Transmigration 38

Tropic of Cancer .... 5

V.

Unity of the world ... 12
upftdhi's (attributions) . . 59
Upanishad (confidential sit-
ting, secret doctrine) 6. 21 sq.
Ushas (dawn) 8

P«fO

V.

Yaigeshikam 34. 35

Yallabha 46. 58

Yaruva (god of the starry

heaven) 7

Y&yu, v&ta (wind) .... 8
Yed&nta (end of the Yeda)

21. 34. 35. 40. 45
yi^isht&dyaitam (modified

monism) 46

Yindhya 6

Yish^uism 34

Yislmu (the vivifying force

of the sun) 8

vy&vaharik! avasth& (empiri-
cal standpoint) .... 47
Way of the fathers (pitri-

y&na) 31

Wayofthegod8(devay&na) 31

X.

Xenophanes 4. 12

Y.

YfijSavalkya 24. 25. 30. 37. 40

Yigurveda (Yeda of sacri-
ficial formulas) 6

Yama (first man, god of
death) 29

Yoga .... 34.35.86.40

Z.

Zoroaster

Oerlag oon Karl Curttus, Berlin W.

Die Heldentaten

des Dom Christoph da Gama

in Abessinien

Nach dem portugiesischen Berichte
des MIGUEL DE CASTANHOSO
iibersetzt und herausgegeben
Ton

Enno Littmann

ord. Professor an der Unlversit&t Strafiburg

Der Expedition der Portugiesen unter Christoph da Gama,
einem Sohne des groBen Seefahrers Vasco da Gama, nach
Abessinien gebiihrt in der Geschichte ihres Landes ein hoher
Ehrenplatz. Das Ergebnis der Expedition in den Jahren 1541 — 43
ist nicht als groBe Eroberung anzusehen, es wurde weder eine
Kolonie gegriindet, noch wurden Schatze gesammelt, sondem
ein christliches Reich, das sich Jahrhunderte hindurch in schwerem
Kampfe gegen Heldientum und Islam behauptet hatte, wurde
vom Untergange gerettet. Fast ubermisnschliche Anstrengungen
hatten jene vierhundert Helden zusammen mit ihrem tapferen
Fiihrer, der ihnen in allem voranging, zu erdulden; trotz des
imgewohnten Landes, der groBen Hitze, trotz Wassermangels
imd schlechter Emahrung, groBer, miihevoUer Marsche imd
durchwachter N^chte klUnpften sie mit unerschutterlichem Mute.
„Sie waren'S ^^ der abessinische Chronist sagt, „starke und
mutige MUnner, die nach Kampf dursteten wie die Wolfe und
nach Schlachten hungerten wie die Lowen'^; und ihr Anfuhrer
war „ein starker Held, dessen Herz wie von Eisen und Stahl
war". Jener Kampf von Europaem in Nordost-Afrika um die
Mitte aes 16. Jahrhunderts ermnert uns unwillkiirlich an die
Kampfe, die im 19. und zu Anfang des 20« Jahrhunderts von
Europaern in Afrika gefiihrt sind, zimial auch an die unserer
deutschen Landsleute im Sudwesten des schwarzen Erdteils, wo
teilweise ganz ahnliche Bedingungen vorliegen wie in Abessinien.

ca. M. 4.50

T

Perlgg oon Karl (Eurtius. Berlin W.

Berliner Dortr$$e

Qeft 1. Dr. »fre6 gorte, ^ ,fflSSd|^SK'iV«n
Die DSmer Chinos

Dortrfigc, gc^alten im Seminar filr orientaIif(i^e Sprd^en in Berlin
Die in 6ent Qeft niedergelegten Hufseii^nungen bajieren auf eigenen, sunt tTeil
frem5fpra(^igen, nid^t |e6ermann leii^t jugfinglii^en (Uuellen grd|eren Umfangs. Sie
fnt^alten 6as IPiffensiDertefte fiber 5iefe OSIfter, loeli^e burc^ 6ie politifi^en (Ereigniffe
ber Ie%ten 3a||re mt\\x in ben TTtittelpunkt h^% allgemeinen 3nterenes gerilAt finb,
unb follen bie Kenninis Chinas loeiteren Kreifen oermittein ^elfen.

m. ^60

Qeft 2. Dr. Wbert pieftn, &"iUlfr»v«?^t^iHS^^B2s;;
Uber Beri*Beri

unb i^re Bebeutung fiir tDirtfd^aftli^e unb feriegerifd^e
Untemc^mungen in ben tDormen Efinbern
Dortrag, ge^alten in 5er Deutfc^en KoIoniaIge{eII{d)aft, Hbteil. Berlin
<Eine fotrje DarfteQung oon C^araMer unb Oerbreitung ber oer^ngnisoollen
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berUAfii^tigt ift bie 5rage i^rer grogen Bebeutung ffir Me nirtf^aftlic^en Unter»
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— • m. —.60 — — ^-^

Bilbungsfragen ber (Begentoart

Zxi einer fi^orfen An6Iage unb entfc^iebenen Abfage an bie Art unb IDeife, ber
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fi(^ ber Oerfaffer, ben ebelfie SamiHentrabitionen (fpri^t 3U uns boi^ in feinem
Urenftel ber (Beift 5tiebri(^ Si^illers) loie perfdnli^e Ilberseugung ju einem
ber htx^\!^txi Dertreter bes 3bealismus, loie einer oerfeinerten Cebensftuttur fiempeln»
in geiftoonen Husfu^rungen an bas groge gebilbete publicum.
^— ^— — CIcgont gei^eftet OT. t.-- '

€uaett Sd^el

Huffif(^e Kulturbilber

(Eriebntfle unb (Erinnerungen

. . . Cin neues Buc^ oon Cugen Sabel fiber Hu|Ianb ift fteis oimtommen. Dos
iKNTliegenbe Bu<^ ^eii^net fic^ befonbers buri^ bie Heii^^altigiteit feines 3n^Its aus,
unb es ift nW nur ein yg^rer (Benuft, bes Uerfoffers oerf^iebenartige .r^nnerungeit
unb Crlebniffe'* ju lefen, fonbem bas Bu^ bJetet au^ fo oJel Bele^rung . . .

(Angemetne 3eitung, Tltfim^en^
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